


Derail

by AdaptationDecay



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Afterlife, Community: xover_exchange, Crossover, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Immortality, Loss of Faith, Religion, Revenge, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-04
Updated: 2009-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-04 11:21:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdaptationDecay/pseuds/AdaptationDecay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Getting things back on track.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Derail

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Be_TheMoon in the 2009 Crossover Exchange.
> 
> With thanks to Jenn Calaelen, who helped get this story where it needed to be, then made it shiny once it was there.

On the 16th of June 1949 the 1.15 to Bristol had derailed, killing the driver, the people waiting on the platform and everybody on board.

Susan Pevensie had lost a lot in that crash: her parents, her brothers, her sister, her cousin, her peace of mind and her faith in God.

But she wasn't alone.

Susan was convinced that in the days that followed the accident, the only thing that kept her sane was the understanding and fellowship of the other people who had lost loved ones in the crash.

She'd had to identify the bodies herself and would never forget the feeling of cold horror in the pit of her stomach when the police car had stopped outside the Glaciarium. It was the first time the numbers she'd heard on the radio had sounded real: the moment when she'd realised that so many people had died that the bodies had been taken not to a morgue, but to a skating rink. Her knees had started to give way and the constable accompanying her had reached out. Susan might have fallen, except at that moment she saw Mrs McLeod.

Agatha McLeod was an elderly Scottish lady who - like Susan - had lost everything in the derailment. Her husband, Morris, had been on the platform. Mrs McLeod had only lost one person that day, but that one person was all she'd had.

Mrs McLeod had been standing outside the Glaciarium looking fretfully at the doors when Susan had arrived and nearly fallen. She had stepped forwards and slipped her hand into Susan's and said, "We'll go in together, shall we?"

They had walked towards the ice together, Susan's young hand in Mrs McLeod's frail one and in helping each other they'd helped themselves. Through everything that they were going to see on the ice, through Susan's sudden, helpless certainty that no loving god could do this and through the tears and the terror, Mrs McLeod would be there, holding her hand. It had been the same with the others; the survivors had formed a community. More than that, in the months following the crash, they had formed a surrogate family and as with any family, there would be reunions...

*

On the 16th of June 1952 at 12.45, Susan had finished laying her flowers by the plaque on the station platform and went into the ladies toilets to freshen up. She was splashing water on her face, when she heard the sobbing.

"Are you all right?"

Silence.

"You needn't be embarrassed. It's Susan Pevensie, I'm here for the anniversary too."

More silence.

Susan slowly walked along the row of doors. Each one was hanging open. Each cubicle was unoccupied. There was nobody else in there with her, but as she walked slowly back to the sink and Susan heard a tiny, stifled sniffle.

Curious, Susan pulled the main door open, then slammed it noisily as if she had left. Almost immediately she heard the sobbing again.

"Hello? I know you're there."

Instant silence.

Susan walked back along the row of empty cubicles, nervously. Somebody was in there with her, somebody who couldn't be seen. A thousand thoughts flew through her head: a tree lined pathway and a little girl with a stone in her shoe, a solemn explanation in a sunny glade that there would be no more magic and the moment in the chilly Glaciarium when magic's replacement had deserted her too. Her skin pricking, Susan asked aloud: "Is this magic?"

The reply was immediate and cautious.

"You're not a muggle?"

She had no idea what a muggle was, but the tone in which the question was asked meant the only possible answer was her indignant "Certainly not!"

"And you're not going to shout at me?"

"No."

"Are there any muggles out there?"

Susan looked around helplessly and ventured "There's nobody here apart from me."

The invisible person made a small 'hmmm' noise, as if assessing the danger, then said "And you promise I'm not in trouble? Swear on your mother's life?"

Susan swallowed, hard.

"My mother died three years ago," she said and then feeling this did not convey the magnitude of what had happened, continued, "All my family are dead."

"Mine too," said the voice. "Are _you_ dead?"

"What sort of a question is that? Of course I'm not dead!"

"Oh," said the voice and a silver-grey girl emerged from the far wall of the ladies toilets and looked Susan straight in the eye. "I am."

*

It was a long time before either of them spoke. Susan wasn't quite sure who was the most surprised. Quite possibly the ghost, who was now staring at her nervously.

"I don't recognise you," said the ghost. "Why don't I know you? You're my age."

"_Your_ age? But you can't be a day over 14!"

"I died in 1942," said the ghost. "I should know you. What house were you in at school?"

"Balmoral. I won the house archery prize."

"Balmoral? That's not one of..." Myrtle narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "What school did you go to?"

"Sunny Hill Girls School in Somerset."

The ghost's face fell.

"But that's not even... That's a _normal_ school!"

"It's a very good school," said Susan, loyally. "My cousin went to a pretty queer school, perhaps that's the one you went to."

"Your cousin? Oh I see." The ghost relaxed. "That's how it was in my family, too. I was the only one. It must have been pretty odd for you, having a cousin who was involved in magic when you weren't."

Susan got the impression that they were talking at cross-purposes, but answered "Yes." It _had_ been odd when Eustace and the others had been able to talk about nothing but Narnia. There had been fights - unfair ones - since Susan had only been doing as she'd been told. _The time has come to put Narnia behind you. You must live fully in your own world where you know me by another name._ Except, in the end, even that hadn't been real. Just another mad dream, a lie she'd told herself because she'd wanted to believe.

"Excuse me," Susan told the ghost and stepped outside onto the platform. The sun was shining. People were milling around. Mrs McLeod was sitting on a bench. In the distance, a church clock began to play the Westminster Quarters. The tune was followed by a single basso profundo tone.

"Expect the first ghost when the bell tolls one," Susan muttered to herself and - turning away from the normality of the scene - she went back inside to confront the ghost.

*

"Why were you crying?"

The ghost looked up, startled. Perhaps she hadn't expected Susan to return.

"I'm a ghost. Isn't that enough?"

"But you've been dead for years. You said so yourself."

"Oh, very tactful," said the ghost. "Very sensitive, I don't think! Myrtle's been dead long enough she should just learn to cope. Is that it?"

"Myrtle? Is that your name? Well look Myrtle, you can't just keep on crying for years. Believe me, I know. Something must have set you off and if you tell me what it was, perhaps I could help?"

"It's Olive," said Myrtle. Her eyes shining with tears again. "She's dead."

Susan instinctively reached for Myrtle's hand, but found herself passing right through it as if it were vapour. Sticking her suddenly icy hand into her pocket, Susan settled for saying, "I'm sorry. Were you close?"

"Close? I _hated_ her!" Myrtle began to pace up and down. "It was all her fault. All of it. She made my life a misery and if she hadn't been so awful, I'd never have run away and I wouldn't have seen the monster"

"Monster?"

"Slytherin's monster. He kept it in a secret chamber somewhere in the school. Didn't your cousin tell you about it?"

Susan thought about explaining that her cousin had gone to a different school. That the only monsters at Experiment House were human ones. Instead, she shook her head.

"Well, perhaps he didn't want to worry you. It _was_ frightening. They think now that it might have been some sort of giant spider, but at the time all anybody knew was that it was a monster so powerful that if you looked at it directly, you _died_."

"And what happened?"

Myrtle gave her a withering look.

"Oh. Is that what happened to you?"

"Yes," said Myrtle in a voice indicating that she was on the verge of tears again. "It was all Olive's fault. You can't think how badly I wanted to hurt her, but I couldn't. Ghosts can't touch anything apart from other ghosts. Still I let her know what I thought of her."

"What did you do?"

"I used to follow her around and remind her what she'd done. I told everybody. When she finished school she thought she'd be rid of me, but I used to come down to Swindon all the time. It's easy enough to follow the railway tracks. I remember one time at her brother's wedding she thought I wouldn't come, but I burst through the wall mid-way through the ceremony and told everybody that she'd killed me."

"Wasn't that a bit much?"

"That's what she said," said Myrtle dolefully. "She went to the Ministry of Magic to stop me stalking her. They said I was taking liberties and following her all over the country wasn't the same thing as _leaving an imprint of yourself on the earth to walk where your living self once trod_. They said I had to stay at the school and haunt the place I died, but I think really they were just worried that muggles might see me. That's why I had to be sure that you already knew about magic. If you'd been an ordinary muggle, I'd have been in breach of the Statute of Secrecy, but I had to see Olive again."

"To make up?"

"No, to make sure she hadn't forgotten, but when I got there I found out she'd _died_."

"Well... I mean... Isn't that a good thing, then? I mean, if she's a ghost too, then you can sort it out once and for all."

"But she isn't," wailed Myrtle. "She's gone."

Susan suddenly felt as if she were standing on crumbling ground at the edge of a very tall cliff and when she next spoke it was to ask, very softly "Gone where?"

"Somewhere farther on," said Myrtle, sadly. "The place you go to when you die. I don't know where it is, because I didn't go. You have to choose, when you die and I chose to stay because I was angry. If I hadn't stayed behind to tell on her, nobody would have known what she did. Only now she's gone on and it's just the same as if she'd got away with it."

Susan found herself filled with pity for this small grey girl who would never change, never grow, never move on - who would simply remain, forever locked in a childhood feud that nobody else remembered. And as she thought about what Myrtle had said, it felt as if something caught fire inside Susan's head and for a moment everything was clearly lit and visible. It was only with difficulty that she managed to respond to Myrtle.

"And what will you do now?"

"I'm going back to school, said Myrtle. "I have to."

"I should go too," said Susan, suddenly aware that she had been in the toilets for a rather long time. "Um... will you be all right?"

Myrtle shrugged hopelessly.

"I have to 'walk the earth where my living self once trod'. That's what I chose. Only..." Myrtle's solemn eyes looked up at Susan from behind her thick glasses. Only, d'you think I should have chosen the other way?"

"None of us is ever told what might have happened," Susan told her. "Goodbye Myrtle."

As she walked out into the daylight, the clock in the distance tolled for quarter past one. It only played the first part of the Westminster Quarters, but Susan found herself singing the whole thing under her breath.

As she left the station with Mrs McLeod, Susan thought for a moment that she could see a transparent girl, walking northwards along the railway tracks, but soon the figure was indistinguishable from the haze of the midday heat.

_All through this hour, Lord be my guide. That by thy power, no foot shall slide._


End file.
